Brady Edmunds is staying.
The four-star quarterback announced on Thursday, July 23 that he has shut down his recruitment and plans to sign with Ohio State in December, per Eleven Warriors’ Dan Hope. A to Z Sports credits the first report to Rivals’ Hayes Fawcett, who wrote that Edmunds “is locked in with Ohio State and has shut down his recruitment.”
That sentence ends the longest running open question in the 2027 class, and it lands one day after Ohio State lost David Gabriel Georges to Tennessee. Two decisions, two days, opposite directions.
The wobble Ohio State started itself
Edmunds committed in December 2024. Per Eleven Warriors, he was all in for more than a year after that: frequent trips from California to Columbus, public peer recruiting of other Ohio State targets, the early face of the class.
Then Ohio State went shopping. Hope writes that Edmunds’ commitment had been shaky for several months, and he names the cause plainly: after the Buckeyes ramped up their efforts to recruit other quarterbacks in the 2027 class this spring, Edmunds began listening to other schools. The only one he seriously considered was UCLA.
He took an official visit to Westwood on June 5, and per Eleven Warriors’ Chase Brown he came back sold on the new head coach there, Bob Chesney, who took James Madison to a College Football Playoff appearance last season. Speaking to Rivals’ Adam Gorney, in comments Brown carried on June 17, Edmunds said the trip “went really, really well” and that “UCLA definitely hit the spot. My family really loved it there. It definitely won them over.”
By mid-June it was a two-school race in his own words. “My biggest thing that I’m focused on is if football is taken away from me can I see myself there?” he told reporters. “There’s a lot of schools that I don’t see myself there. UCLA and Ohio State are just those major two.”
He also said the quiet part out loud, which is why this was a live flip and not a formality:
“If for whatever reason it ends up going the other way, it would be a tough thing to walk away from. I’ve been a part of this for so long, obviously committed for 18-plus months, one of the longest commits in all of the class, so it means a lot.”
What he wanted answered
Brown reported that Edmunds went into his Ohio State official visit with two questions: whether the Buckeyes planned to add a second quarterback to the 2027 class, and what his own early role would be. He was not asking them to promise him the room. He was asking them to be straight with him about it.
“I just want to make sure we’re on the same page with everything and how we go about this correctly,” he said in June. He added that he had no problem with another quarterback joining the class as long as Ryan Day and Billy Fessler shared the same vision.
He got both answers. Per Hope, Ohio State told Edmunds it could still take a second quarterback in the cycle, and Edmunds told Ohio State that was fine, because he expects to compete for the job either way. A to Z Sports dates his Columbus official visit to June 19. Hope’s account is that he arrived in Columbus genuinely undecided and left reassured.
The practical read on that second quarterback: Hope reports the expectation is now that Edmunds will be the only one in the class, because every top-100 quarterback in the composite for this cycle is already committed somewhere.
Why there was no plan B, and why this site was watching
We flagged Edmunds on July 5 as the least settled piece of the class, and the reason that watch mattered was never the player. It was the absence of an alternative behind him.
The staff had already tested the one obvious road. Ohio State took a run this spring at five-star Nebraska pledge Trae Taylor, who reaffirmed with the Huskers and sits on our board as a miss. Hope’s line on July 23 is the same fact stated from the other end: the top of the position is gone. So a flip to UCLA would not have meant replacing Edmunds. It would have meant entering the flip market at the one position nobody sells.
That is also the argument the site made in Quarterback U: Ohio State’s habit of carrying exactly one quarterback per class is fine right up until the one leaves.
The ranking arc, honestly
Edmunds is 6-foot-5 and 220 pounds. He was a five-star and the No. 10 overall prospect in the 2027 class when he pledged, per Eleven Warriors, and he is a four-star now.
Where exactly he sits depends on which line of Hope’s story you read. The file card and the commit table both put him at No. 243 overall, and the table has him No. 20 at the position; the prose in the same story says No. 245 overall and No. 20 at the position. A to Z Sports, working independently, reports 243 and No. 20. Our board carried No. 251 from Eleven Warriors’ July 7 taking-stock piece and now carries 243, dated, the way Karlos May’s number is.
None of that is the interesting part of his file. Hope reports he was selected as one of this year’s Elite 11 quarterbacks (Scarlet and Game calls him an Elite 11 finalist) and that he completed 68.1 percent of his passes last season for 2,724 yards and 32 touchdowns against two interceptions in 11 games. Two picks in a full season is the number that should follow him into camp.
He is not shy about the reason. “I think the thing that makes me, in my opinion, the best quarterback in the country is my confidence and how I approach every single day and every single practice and every single game, weight room, everything like that,” he said in June. “I just think mentally, I’m different.”
What it changes on the board
Nothing, and that is the point. The class stays at 19, because a recommitment adds nobody. What moves is the risk sitting under one of the 19, and that risk was the largest single item on this board a month ago.
What is still open is the running back spot, which Georges took to Tennessee on July 22, and tight end. The quarterback line is closed.
Ohio State’s quarterback recruiting now points at 2028, where Hope reports the Buckeyes are an early frontrunner for Christopher Vargas, the No. 1 quarterback in the rising junior class. That class has its own board here, and it is a long way from finished.
One caution before anyone files this away. A shut down recruitment is not a signature. Edmunds said in June, before any of this resolved, that “wherever I end up, I think I’m gonna make the most of it,” and what he has actually done is tell reporters he is done looking. December is when it counts. Scarlet and Game notes the obvious about what he is signing into: Julian Sayin and Tavien St. Clair are both in front of him, so the reward for winning this recruitment is the right to wait.
For now, the 2027 class has a quarterback who wants to be here, and says he has since fourth grade.
“This is the place that I’ve always kind of wanted to be at throughout my whole entire life, whether it was football or not. Before I even started taking football seriously, I wanted to just be a student here, when I was in like fourth grade or whatever.”
